the 21st the Mataafas burned his town of Leulumoenga, his own splendid
house flaming with the rest; and there are few things of which a native
thinks more, or has more reason to think well, than of a fine Samoan
house. Tamasese women and children were marched up the same day from
Atua, and handed over with their sleeping-mats to Mulinuu: a most
unwelcome addition to a party already suffering from want. By the 20th,
they were being watered from the _Adler_. On the 24th the Manono fleet
of sixteen large boats, fortified and rendered unmanageable with tons of
firewood, passed to windward to intercept supplies from Atua. By the
27th the hungry garrison flocked in great numbers to draw rations at the
German firm. On the 28th the same business was repeated with a different
issue. Mataafas crowded to look on; words were exchanged, blows
followed; sticks, stones, and bottles were caught up; the detested
Brandeis, at great risk, threw himself between the lines and expostulated
with the Mataafas--his only personal appearance in the wars, if this
could be called war. The same afternoon, the Tamasese boats got in with
provisions, having passed to seaward of the lumbering Manono fleet; and
from that day on, whether from a high degree of enterprise on the one
side or a great lack of capacity on the other, supplies were maintained
from the sea with regularity. Thus the spectacle of battle, or at least
of riot, at the doors of the German firm was not repeated. But the
memory must have hung heavy on the hearts, not of the Germans only, but
of all Apia. The Samoans are a gentle race, gentler than any in Europe;
we are often enough reminded of the circumstance, not always by their
friends. But a mob is a mob, and a drunken mob is a drunken mob, and a
drunken mob with weapons in its hands is a drunken mob with weapons in
its hands, all the world over: elementary propositions, which some of us
upon these islands might do worse than get by rote, but which must have
been evident enough to Becker. And I am amazed by the man's constancy,
that, even while blows were going at the door of that German firm which